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26 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. dation for a new literary language of the whole nation. Besides, all these writings are value- less; they show no trace of genuine national spirit and national character ; they are poor imi- tations of weak foreign originals. The difficulty of raising the contemporaneous language of Cy- prus or Maina to the dignity of a national lan- guage became an impossibility with the conquest and political destruction of these two islands. The Turkish reign brought along with many other evils much ignorance. This ignorance, one would assume, might have favored the abandonment of the old language. Indeed, the people's idioms were spoken during this fearftil period, and attempts were made to use the vulgar language in literature, but more than ever in vain. The Roman Catholic priests, in order to make propaganda among the Greeks, used the vulgar language, and monks of this church have translated the liturgy into the con- temporaneous idiom of the people, some of these translations being printed even in Latin charac- ters; this same language they spoke in church. The Greeks always entertained a certain dislike toward the people's language, and are careful not to employ it when they speak of sacred things. In some cases it was the church which